Your productivity may flow when you’re in the zone, but it’s easy to get carried away looking for motivation. Truth is, you don’t need to feel like doing something to get it done.

Sometimes you want to get things done, and sometimes you don’t. Real productivity comes from when you realize that your mood isn’t associated with what needs to get done. In his book, The Antidote, Oliver Burkeman explains:

Who says you need to wait until you ‘feel like’ doing something in order to start doing it? The problem, from this perspective, isn’t that you don’t feel motivated; it’s that you imagine you need to feel motivated. … If you can regard your thoughts and emotions about whatever you’re procrastinating on as passing weather, you’ll realize that your reluctance about working isn’t something that needs to be eradicated or transformed into positivity. You can coexist with it. You can note the procrastinatory feelings and work anyway.

Advertisement

Burkeman suggests you regard your thoughts and emotions toward your tasks as passing weather. Your reluctance to work isn’t something you need to get rid of or turn into motivation. Learn to recognize the feeling, accept it, and move along. Or maybe you don’t have a procrastination problem, just an impulsivity problem.